SAN FRANCISCO - Joe Rosenthal, The Associated Press photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, has died. He was 94.

Rosenthal died Sunday of natural causes at an assisted living facility in suburban Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

"He was a good and honest man, he had real integrity," she said.

Rosenthal's iconic photo, shot on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.

What happened was that when people asked him if the picture was posed, he had an entirely different picture in mind, with several people standing in front of the flagpole, facing the photographer. He was referring to that one.

He had no idea that he had captured such a dramatic picture until he saw it later. The famous picture was captured accidentally.

The article explains that a small flag had been planted at first, but it was deemed too small and so they replaced it with a larger one. The AP photographer captured this second flag raising, but he didn't arrange for them to do it. A Marine sergeant also captured the second raising on film.

I think there's also a photograph of that first flag raising in existence, but it's not as famous as this second one.

8. And let's not forget - three of those men never left the island alive...

Of his surviving companions, Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian, returned to Arizona and a life of drinking, drifting and working at odd jobs, and died at 32, frozen to death of exposure and alcohol abuse, almost 10 years to the day after he helped raise the flag. He was horrified by being treated as a hero when his buddies, who he considered the real heroes, were buried back on Iwo Jima. Rene Gagnon, the Corpsman, returned to New Hampshire and died bitter and disappointed and troubled by alcohol abuse throughout his life, and once said being a war hero was a blessing and a curse. Bradley, the winner of the Navy Cross, seldom mentioned the war, insisting undramatically that Iwo Jima had no heroes but the dead.

...'only the good die young', then i guess the assholes who filmed the staged razing of the Hussein statue will live to be about 300 or so. My, how the once-mighty ethics of the profession have fallen. Although, to be fair, the famous photo of McArthur returning to the Phillipines was staged, several times at several beaches (according to Wm. Manchester's "American Caeser"). Joe R., RIP.

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